After saving kids in fire, woman dies with 2 relatives

Updated 12:34 am, Friday, July 12, 2013

Three Fort Bend County women died in a fire on Thursday, including one who had helped three children escape but returned to the burning home to help her bedridden mother and aunt, officials and a neighbor said.

The fire, which broke out about 11:45 a.m., gutted the house in the 9900 block of Johnson between Orchard and Simonton in rural Fort Bend County.

Authorities said three children - boys, 17 and 5, and a 10-year-old girl - got out of the home just in time.

"They are safe," said Bob Haenel, a spokesman with the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office.

Haenel did not have identities of the three women but said they were related.

One was in her 90s, another in her 80s and the third in her 50s, he said.

A neighbor said one of the women, identified by her as Joyce, helped the children escape but then went back inside to assist her mother and her aunt, women with health problems.